


Ad Infinitum

by Coffee_Flavored_Kisses



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Early Relationship, Fluff, Light Dialogue, M/M, calling each other boyfriend for the first time, mostly the ramblings of an emotional author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 19:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19409935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses/pseuds/Coffee_Flavored_Kisses
Summary: Patrick just wants to hear David say it out loud, and David has no plans to do so.





	Ad Infinitum

Because he loves him. That’s why.

Because even now as David has fallen asleep propped up against his chest, even as he steadies his hasty breathing so that David will rise and fall gently against his body without awakening, all Patrick can do is think about how much he loves him. How he loves the weight of his body on his, the way his eyes sparkle when they break away from a kiss, the way he looks right at Patrick when they talk, absorbing every word, studying every subtle expression and understanding those few things that have yet to be spoken. This is why he needs to know what they are.

It has nothing to do with an affirmation of this relationship. It is by now undeniably a relationship, of course. Yes, it’s sex and it’s fun and it’s sporadic and unprompted when it happens, but it’s so much more than that, too. It’s nights like these, the two of them on the couch in the motel lobby, hours after Stevie’s gone home. It’s late. The lights are off. The sign says closed. But there they are in the middle of the receiving area cuddled together in the middle of a movie they’ve watched together a dozen times now. But it’s never boring. It’s never too much. And that’s how he knows he loves him.

Still, he can’t shake the need in his mind that David absolutely must say it out loud. Say he’s his boyfriend. Say they’re a couple. Say they’re in a relationship. Say anything at all that’s more than just this, more than just that. Something that says they are all those things and they are something else, too. _Just once, David, say it out loud._

He pulls David closer to him, a little scared he’ll disturb his sleep. But it’s time to go home, the movie’s over, and they have to work in the morning. When David’s eyes open, Patrick is entranced by them once again, and he will be again, and again and again ad infinitum. He tells David he has to go now. David nods, kisses him, tells him to stay anyway. But they both know he can’t. Interesting that he wants him to, but not so interesting he should be dwelling on it like this. Patrick wants to stay, maybe even forever, but he can’t even stay this one night. He kisses him again, tells him he’ll text when he gets home, walks David to his room, and drives away.

And it consumes him, this nagging sensation. He wishes the drive home was longer so he had more time to think, but as soon as he steps over the threshold into the house he knows he’s better off sleeping. He collapses into bed face-first before he can even undress. It’s exhausting trying to understand love the first time it’s happening to you.

The next day, David walks into the store already going on about something Alexis said. Something about his hair, and he says it doesn’t bother him, but it clearly bothers him. David does this sometimes. He’ll say someone made some sort of comment or looked at him some sort of way, but the most he’ll add is “I didn’t care for it.” Which is his way of saying, “I hope you don’t think so, too.” And Patrick never does agree with whatever the comment or the look implied. He’s seen David’s flaws, and there’s nothing he’d change about any one of them.

“You know how she is,” Patrick offers, and now he’s approaching David, staring at his hair, then on down the rest of him. He lets his hands wander around David’s waist and lets his lips kiss David’s mouth because he knows better than to not let them do what they were so clearly made to do. And then David forgets all the comments that have ever been made as well as all the people who’ve made them. All he knows is this, is Patrick, is fingers playing down the small of his back and the painful realization that someone is walking through the door.

And it’s not that David doesn’t think about it, too. He thinks about the relationship, about how terrifying and temporary it is. How it’s only a matter of time before Patrick realizes there’s something wrong with him, that there’s too much wrong with him. It’s only a matter of time before David finally finds that line and crosses it, even if it does sometimes seem that line is getting thicker and further away. Still, he’ll somehow share too much, show a little too much insecurity. Patrick will realize it’s too much work. He’ll thank David for helping him realize who he was meant to be, there’d be a lovely final night together, and Patrick will be gone the next day. It wouldn’t be the first time, and surely it won’t be the last.

Maybe normally, David wouldn’t worry about the end approaching. Normally, he would just accept the fact that this was all so temporary that there was no reason to prolong it. That maybe it was better to get it over with anyway because the longer they’re together, the more David wants to believe that maybe this one’s different. After all, he’s never in his life felt with anyone what he felt with Patrick from that first time they met. But then he figures that’s not love. How would he even know what love was? No, that was just a case of meeting the first decent guy in years and somehow convincing himself that this one was what the old folks called “a keeper.”

He’s been watching too many Reese Witherspoon movies, he thinks.

But there is something distinctly different here in this relationship. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like performance art, like theatre, like work. It feels like the morning the wheat turns from beige to golden, like waking up to the perfect temperature two minutes before the alarm goes off. It feels like a cold drink on a hot night and a hot drink on a cold night and the perfect amount of pillows and the perfectly-sized portion of lasagna.

He doesn’t want to rush this into ending. So he doesn’t say it. He figures he’ll never say it. It’s just that for the first time, he’s not sure he can control himself.

And then Stevie’s been hanging around the store all day, and Patrick’s amused with her. Maybe that’s a better thing that David had thought it would be. If she’s there to keep Patrick busy, then that would invariably mean that the two of them won’t have to be cooped up together suppressing urges and feelings and words neither knows how to say. And even when the store closes and she should be gone, she’s still there. Maybe Patrick is realizing she’s more interesting than David. Maybe Patrick’s found a new toy. Maybe the end of this is closer than David thought.

But he has no idea that Patrick’s mind is stayed on the thoughts that invaded just a couple of nights before and haven’t let him go. He can’t stop thinking about how desperately, stupidly, sloppily in love he is with the man who stands before him, waving his arms about wildly as he insults Patrick’s choices. He can’t stop thinking about the last pair of lips he kissed, that those are the lips he wants to kiss forever. He can’t stop thinking about the body that fits so well with his, that right down to the way their fingers intertwine, the way their legs curl around one another, the way their breaths match as they look into each other’s eyes and smile in the aftermath of their passion, everything about them is just plain _right_. He’s in love with David. He doesn’t care if David’s in love with him. Or rather, he _does_ care, and he cares very much, but he doesn’t care if it’s happening now. He’ll wait. He’s in no hurry.

And then he hears it. He thinks he might fall out of his chair, and he almost does. David just said “boyfriend,” and it was so effortless and natural that it feels like maybe there’s a chance David’s already considered them this for a long while now.

When he asks David to repeat himself, David tries to backtrack. But Patrick’s not letting him off that easy. Everything in him wants to stand up and lunge across and take David down like a linebacker until their on the floor and nothing exists around them and Patrick can press David into the hardwood and whisper the word “boyfriend” against his ear over and over again until David admits he’s said it out loud. All of it is too much for both of them, and Stevie’s always been able to read a room. She leaves, and David gravitates to the magnetic pull of Patrick’s body, sits in his lap, and kisses him.

The room melts around them and nothing else matters. Patrick’s heard it, and David can’t take it back, and David doesn’t want to take it back. That’s his boyfriend, whether or not he’ll ever say it out loud again. But Patrick will say it. He already is.

There was about a half a second of fear that struck David’s heart when he realized he’d said it out loud. This is why he’s never done so. This is why he’d found alternative phrases to use for his past short-lived trysts with people of every continent. He never said “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” or whatever term was preferred by the general public in those cases. He’d just say they were exploring one another, or they were discovering themselves through each other, or, once, that they were sampling an international seven-course meal of relational cuisine. As soon as he’d said that last one, he knew it was over.

But this was so simple. _Boyfriend_. Patrick is his _boyfriend_. He is Patrick’s _boyfriend_. And here in the store they’ve created together, he wants to show Patrick everything it means to him that for the first time in his life, someone’s proud of that fact.

They curse the lack of privacy as their embrace, their kisses push for something more. They know now that they’d both been trying to say it all along for a period of time that only they and God know for certain. Patrick wants to hold David forever, but this is not new. From the first time they embraced, he had no intention of letting go.

But it _is_ new for David. Being held, loving it, wanting it. He’d spent so much of his life proclaiming his hatred for touch that he’d forgotten how much he loved it when it was desired and not expected. He could stay like this forever, he realized. He could stay like this until the earth swallowed them up together. _Ad infinitum._

He’d always known what love was, but he was only just now discovering who.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: nbc-trialanderror


End file.
